Posh NYC school buys into San Jose

An exclusive New York City-based school has paid $33 million for an office building next to its emerging campus in Downtown San Jose.

An affiliate of Avenues: The World School bought the 72,700-square-foot tower at 525 Race St. in an all-cash deal, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Cushman & Wakefield brokers Erik Hallgrimson, Walt Stephenson and Brett Krouskup arranged the deal.

The office building, now inhabited by Vocera Communications, is next to an 11.9-acre campus the elite private school is preparing to open next year. Avenues paid $27.1 million for an office building at 550 Meridian Ave. to serve as a beachhead for the school’s Silicon Valley campus.

The global educator plans to redevelop most of a site bounded by Meridian Avenue, Saddleback Street, Race Street and Parkmoor Avenue.

The project would re-use two office buildings, keep an existing parking structure, build four new buildings, develop a lighted sports field and make access and on-site improvements. The new campus will also include a gymnasium and aquatic center, theater building, secondary classroom building and a student lab building.

“The project proposes to demolish one existing office building and three warehouse buildings, and redevelop the site for use as a private prekindergarten through 12th-grade school,” documents on file with San Jose city planners show.

Avenues, a posh New York-based for-profit education system, is now recruiting students for its founding class next year in grades 6-9, according to its website. Avenues charges $62,700 a year in tuition in New York City. Tuition for its San Jose campus was not disclosed.

The school was launched in 2012 in Manhattan, and now has campuses in China and Brazil, plus a virtual Avenues Online. It was founded by Benno C. Schmidt, Jr., a former President of Yale University, education entrepreneur Chris Whittle and Alan Greenberg, a publisher of Esquire. Whittle left the private school in 2018.

In February 2021, Whittle relisted his 11.2-acre East Hampton estate for $95 million to repay debts to his former company. It was auctioned for just $700,000.

[San Jose Mercury News] – Dana Bartholomew